Changes: That Shit Cray

At about 3pm yesterday (Sunday) I smoked my *last* cigarette. Around 8pm today (Monday) I smoked what I guess was my *first* cigarette. The internal debate went on for hours and involved a lot of bargaining. With myself. I will not regret my decision. Allen has control of them now. This will end in tears. As it began. I cried, no, I sobbed, for almost a solid two hours, mourning my cigarettes as though my best friend in the world had just died. I also realized I was feeling homesick for the old apartment. "I want to go home!" I wailed. This has been a common exclamation throughout my life. I'm always looking to go "home", wherever that is. But I'm sure it exists somewhere and I will know it when I get there.

I wish I had the same interest in keeping up with this blog as I used to have. I just. Do. Not.

It's 8:40pm. I already want to smoke again.

I am too hard on myself. People actually say this to me. If I was so hard on myself I wouldn't be slowly destroying myself. I'd be cutting this shit out. If I actually believed in self-preservation as much as I think I do I wouldn't be drinking and smoking and sedentary-ing myself straight to dementia and death. I am a curious mix of my mother and father. Or listening to fucking Pitchfork's Top 100 Adult Contemporary Hits of 2011.

But do you want to know the main reason I'm trying to quit smoking -- right now, that is -- ??? Because I'm going to New York this weekend and I'm afraid I won't be able to smoke in Mayor Micro-manager's town. Swear to Jesus that's what's been going on in my head about this. A friend of mine is presenting at HOPE Number Nine. And I'm going because I want to stick out like a sore thumb or something.

Fuck. What have I done? I'm still exhausted from Sob-Fest 2012. I have no concentration, not enough time in the day for the things I want to do.

I have 4 projects I need to work on but have only ever so slightly started working on two of them. And so it goes.

There is just something in my head that blocks me. I already felt better (physically) after 26 hours of not smoking. I feel better, good, even, during the day when I haven't drank the night before. But something in me tells me that I don't deserve that feeling. I'd rather be fuzzy and cloudy and sluggish, just unclear, rather than feel "good". There's a lot of "I don't deserve _________" that goes on in my head.

Fucking therapy. It's wrecking me. I'm waiting until tomorrow to call my therapist to tell her I can't make my Thursday appointment in hopes that she won't be able to fit me in on Wednesday. Last week was brutal. I just... I don't even remember what exactly she asked me that made me start crying but it happened. And I was like, "I don't even have a reason to be crying right now." And she goes, "Obviously you do." Which of course made it worse. And she keeps asking about my parents like I don't tell her the same thing every god damn week. Does she not remember or is she fucking with me? Cos she remembers other things.

No, it wasn't my father. It was my mother. It was always my mother. And my sisters. They gave me these labels. The men in my family always loved me. This is complicated. It explains everything. It really does.

Yet she's strangely been affecting my self-esteem. By telling me that my drinking (her main focus) is greatly reducing my self-esteem she's somehow increasing it. I don't know. She's crafty.

This one's dedicated to Schulze. Damn her.

This was your life.

This weekend: Jeremy's bd party at MoFo, hiking at McConnells Mill (which I cannot find a standard spelling for) followed by dinner at North Country Brewing.  Sunday, as usual, was a bummer.  I HATE Sunday's, they make me feel all icky inside and grumpy outside.  Went to Target and Giant Eagle for groceries.  Found a cute skirt at Target, though.

I find that I am simultaneously getting used to the heat and getting fed up with it.   

Yesterday was Day 1 of not drinking.  Again.  My record, recently, has been 7 days.  This has got to stop.  Looks like, at age 33, I'm about to become straight edge for the first time in my life.  I think I'm going to start telling people that that's what I am just to be a smart ass.  I just really don't want to be "belligerent" any more.  I don't really want to quit drinking either, I'm just not good at it.  Or maybe it's that I'm too good.  I'm turning in to such a quitter.  First smoking, then meat, now drinking, I try not to eat things with high fructose corn syrup.  Things get weird as you get older. And I'd like to see if not drinking will make me less... zaftig.  If I may consider myself as such.


I'm reading about Tumblr right now and trying to... oh, there, I've signed up.  Hmm.  I don't know if I can be so specific that it would warrant a Tumblr, maybe I could fit in under the category "Personalities?"  Hmm.  I just found someone's blog that's right up my alley: http://fuckthisdepression.tumblr.com/.  It's where I just stole this from (but she took it from someone else first): 

So I guess I'm already thinking about abandoning blogger.  I'd like to see if Tumblr's more user-friendly, I think it might be.  At least for photos.  And I wonder if the font and size will stay uniform throughout an entire post...  And if it will add extra spacing between paragraphs that i don't request or want... I'm also wondering if Tumblr's just a bunch of teenagers.  I think it might be that as well.  Maybe not.  Holy crap, there's a bunch of cool stuff over here!  And lots of cursing!  Heart heart heart!!!

I'll let you know what I decide about this.  Still have a playlist/mixtape for you, mixtape is easier for you to download, playlist allows you to take/keep what you want.

Thinking about sea creatures.  Real ones. 

   

"Guess what? I'm not a robot."

So I finally downloaded the entire Marina & the Diamonds album, Family Jewels.  I've been listening to a couple songs off this album for months but just now got the whole thing and it's brilliant.  My new favorite thing.

It's 4th of July weekend and I'm hating life.  It's so lonely here.  It's just me and Allen.  Most holidays are like this, especially here, so far away from everyone.  I wish we had friends and/or family to hang out with.  It's soo hot, too, so my plan to get drunk was slowed considerably because it's too hot to drink.

And we keep spending stupid amounts of money on dumb stuff when I want to put it all towards moving but instead I just keep spending it.  We spent $90 on two bags of food at Whole Foods today ($15 on cheese).  We spent about $90 a few days ago on two bags of food at Giant Eagle.  And it's not even stuff you can make a meal out of.  Plus the $225.68 we spent at Ikea yesterday.  I don't deny that we needed four shelves for the absurd amount of DVDs we own and I HAD TO HAVE a salad spinner but that was only $4.  We needed new plates cos the ones we were rockin' were the same one's we've had since we first moved in together in, like, 1997 (or was is 96?).  And we needed another duvet cover that wasn't flannel but was cheap cos Jonesy, bless him, tears up everything and the Sir throws up on the bed every other day.  He's only 10, I can't imagine how needy he's going to be at 14.  Jesus.  It sounds like I'm made out of money.  Guess what?  I'm not.  And there are all those trips we wanted to take.    

I'm busy brainstorming new story ideas for the character that I write about and ideas for blog posts.  Allen's suggested I post a playlist for whoever might read this.  Can't say anyone who reads this would like what I listen to, but who knows.  Trying to think of a new movie-related entry.  I thought I should do another crush list and Allen suggested I do one featuring ladies this time.  I'd tell you my real-time response to this suggestion but you'd think me wicked, I mean offensive.  There's only two ladies on the list so far and I'm not too impressed by either of them.

(Tip: Drinks are more effective if you use a large straw.)

So the above was from Sunday evening.  It's Tuesday morning now and I'm back at work.  The heatwave is on and our poor window unit in the bedroom struggled last night to keep us cool.  Around 8pm it was at least 86 degrees in our living room.  There were some bananas sitting around and it was so hot (how hot was it?) that it smelled like someone was baking banana bread.  That's how hot it was.  I hid in the bedroom and read about 100 pages of this book I picked up from one of the bargain tables at Barnes & Noble:

I LOVE books like this.  I didn't always; I WAS an English major after all.  Then I started writing my own fiction and it turned out to be more like the stuff above so now I try to read more books like this to figure out what works.  

I think I'm going to do a crush post about hot football (soccer) players.  I googled, don't laugh, "football hotties" and found out that quite a few people have already done this.  Not surprised, but I'm not sure I can round up over forty like this person did. We shall soon find out and it sounds like a good way to waste time at work.    

"Beautiful Suicide"

It's strange how a Kanye West song can remind me of this:

Truthfully, it's not strange at all, he pretty much mentions it in the song.  I'm sorry the dl link there doesn't work any more, it's a good song.  If you like that kinda thing.  That photo, by Robert Wiles, is truly gorgeous.  It's from 1947 and I only first saw it in 2009.  Disappointing since it looks like something that was made for me.

Entries are going to be a little sporadic over the next few weeks while I jock out about the WORLD CUP.  Maybe you've heard of it.  It's one of my most favorite things in the WORLD.  I'm such a jock about it that one of the faculty members I've been working with gave me a copy of the New Yorker because it has an article about the England/US rivalry and Tim Howard which she wanted me to read and, inexplicably, a recent issue of France Football, which is all in French but has an article about the French national team.  I spent some time reading it this morning.  No, I don't generally claim to know French, I took a few years of it in high school but that's it.  It's day five and I haven't missed a match yet.

As for what's really going on, and to get back to that photo up there, let me just say that June is a bad month for me.  It's always been the month of the year that I think most about death, dying, and wanting to die.  It's the month when I "tried" to die when I was 16 (or was I 15? I don't recall, it was that profound...).  But a lot of people I know have "tried" to die at some point in their lives so it doesn't make me special.   

Another reason I may be sporadic is that when I start a depression cycle it comes on hard and it comes on fast, faster if I'm drinking too much, and I'm entering one of those cycles now.  Monday was a night of nothing is easy, nothing works right, everything's wrong.  At 9:25 I was in bed after I finally found a working, decent quality upload of True Blood around 8.  Then I took a shower and climbed into bed, hoping to retreat into the Henry Darger-esque saga I've been writing for the past 10 years.  Wiki that.

Another reason I may become sporadic is that, as with most things in my life, this will (has already begun to) become like a chore to me, this blog.  Anything that initially excites me, soon, very soon, begins to bore me.  I remember being so angry at my sister when she called me "fickle" when I was 17 years old.  But she was right.  I was then and I am now.  And I get bored so easily or lose interest in things or people (maybe you), jobs, eating right, exercise...  Then I found $5 and  I had a dream and you were in it...

And did you ever notice that summer is never idyllic anymore?  It definitely isn't here, where I live.  It's like summer isn't even an event here as far as I can tell.  I remember having fun summers, I swear.  But I could be making that up.  BTW, Lily Dale opens for the season on 25 June.  Mike, Jeanne, I'm looking at you...   

I'd like to thank the people who have told me in person that they read this blog.  I appreciate it mightily.  You may also feel free to comment here once in a while if the spirit moves you.

C'mon England!  But if not England then Germany... or Brazil!  WORLD CUP 2010!!!

"May you receive the world a little less than usual today."

So I have never really figured out how to build an "internet personality," a real-life one is hard enough.  I have warring factions in my psyche that simultaneously want and reject "followers."  This is actually exactly the same way my real life goes.  I want to have friends but at the same time I can't stand the thought of having to take someone else's feelings into consideration.  And I can't stand lying to "protect someone's feelings."  Fuck 'em.  Actually having real-life "followers" is EXACTLY what I want, just people who idolize me and don't care how I treat them in return.

God.  Listen to me.  I'm trying to find inspiration to be a... person, and I start off by ranting nihilistically.  Next I'll start sharing my thoughts on eugenics.

I want to write.  There, I said it.  Do I want to be a writer?  I haven't gotten that far.  I used to write, pages and pages, I have a tub full of old journals:



And I'm sure they all run a little like this post here.  I don't know, I can't bring myself to ever look at them, other than the pictures.  I used to draw as well as write, it seems.  Then somewhere along the line I lost interest in both.  In most things really.  And I have my theories about why but they are mine and I can not share them with you at this time.  I have people's feelings to take into consideration. 

I initially wanted to blog about music, but then realized that everyone blogs about music, and most of them do it better than I ever could.  So instead I will blog about what I know: me.

Let's see what happens.  If you read this, please choose to follow it, and then tell others to do the same.  This will enable you to find out who has a secret crush on you.  Who knows, it may even be me!